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By Root 1838 0

the pictures and the memories were striking: Thomas reading aloud by candlelight, his expressive voice bodying forth each story so that the characters seemed to be in the room, just outside the circle of the candlelight. Thomas coming in from working at the end of the day, his shoulders filling the doorway, his affectionate greeting, even though we might have seen each other only twenty minutes before. Thomas and Charles at the breakfast table, when we were living in town, laughing and regaling Louisa and me with stories of their journeys to Leavenworth to get the mail. Thomas, my husband, after the candle was blown out at night, so large a presence that I seemed to disappear into it; not something that memoirists customarily write about but, in truth, the very thing that I could not stop thinking of as I lay curled in my berth that night on the Missouri Rose.

The anguish of these thoughts eventually propelled me out of the berth at eleven forty-five or so. Miss Carter was still heavily asleep. I closed the hasp of my bag as softly as I could and peeked around the curtain into the ladies’ saloon. If the Missouri Rose was anything like the boat that had brought us upstream, male passengers would be allowed to sleep on the floor of the saloon after all the ladies had gone to their cabins, but now, before the journey, the big room was empty. I crept around the curtain and across the floor to the big double doors, which were locked. Trying not to be disappointed or daunted, I then carried my bag along the row of ladies’ cabins, looking for another way out. I didn’t find one, but I found something better, a pair of men’s boots, the toes sticking out underneath the curtain, and, when I listened, hearty snores behind it. I knelt, set down my bag, and slowly extracted the boots. They were unattached to their owner’s feet and came easily. They were not new and did not smell sweet, but I hurriedly pulled off my own shoes and put the boots on, anyway. Though a trifle too large, they were certainly good enough.

This acquisition whetted my appetite for more, especially for a hat or a cap, and I grew bolder. I began to peek behind curtains, but only if I heard evidence of sleep, such as groans or snores. Behind the third curtain, hung on a nail, was the perfect hat—soft-brimmed and slouchy, good for hiding within. I took it. It was a good hat, of a southern style rather than a northern—no doubt made in Kentucky or somewhere like that. It fit, too. I walked my bag down the length of the saloon and found a window, which I opened and climbed out of, onto the deck. I didn’t see anyone around. I closed the window behind me and adopted a nonchalant demeanor, leaning my elbows on the rail, cocking one foot across the other, and pulling down my hat, as I had seen so many men do in my twenty-one years. And it was well that I did, because just then someone rounded the end of the deck and touched the brim of his own hat politely in my direction. I cleared my throat and nodded, but didn’t alter my position. He said, "Pleasant evening," and walked on.

I stood still as he passed.

I saw at once that as long as I was a man, I would be able to do whatever I wanted, and that I would have a taste of freedom such as no woman I had known, even Louisa, had ever had. I stood up and strolled—ambled, really—down the length of the deck, looking for the gangplank, not quite sure where I was on the boat but thrusting one hand in my pocket and carrying my bag with the other, kicking out my feet as I walked, and altogether impersonating, I realized, my nephew Frank. The trousers hung around me, and their inseams rubbed together as I walked. But there was a lovely feeling to it of big strides and nothing in your way, that I remembered from the last time I’d worn trousers, the day our party had tried to parley with the Missourians at the Jenkins claim.

Some Negroes were pulling up the gangplank as I got to it.

"Hey, boys, wait for me," I said, as if I’d been saying such things all my life, and the two men looked at each other, then tipped their caps, and one of